would never tell her all these idle wishes, for Isabel had, or at least
would soon have, herself the reality of all of them and seemed to hold
it lightly. She, Anita, had once spoken with a bit of impatience of some
excellent phase of college life and Isabel's eyes had grown troubled as
though the light words were almost a sacrilege. How very much mistaken
their little world was in its opinion of the two! Anita's lips curled up
in a little satirical smile and Isabel entered the room.
"Not ready, Nita? A kimono, however charming, is unfortunately not the
recognized costume for social occasions in this benighted land,--except
for our fellow-students of Japanese persuasion, so haste you into frills
and furbelows."
* * * * *
There was a party like any other,--bright lights, gay dresses, a little
music and a Distinguished Person,--only a little more movement, groups
of girls drifting about together and watching rather than making a part
of it; a party taken, perhaps, not very seriously; one, also, which
broke itself up into many little ones, these, in some cases, subdued
groups of victims gathered in for the amusement of another person's
unfortunate importation,--in other cases, guests discreetly chosen from
those not utter strangers to each other; and one heard, here the accents
of a southern town, there the soft "thee" of those who, small in number,
have yet made their own a city's nickname; a party on the whole not
homogeneous, restless and shifting, with a disproportion even greater
than usual between the lightness of pale fabrics and the sombreness of
men's dress, a disproportion tending, even, it might seem, to social
joy--to judge by the greater gayety in purely feminine groups.
On a stiff settee under the broad stairway Anita was established in the
midst of a group of Isabel's friends. It was one of the wisely chosen
little parties. All included in it belonged, in effect, to one set in
the city that counts numberless sets courting recognition and as many
more courting the opposite. There was among those around Anita a lady
with presence, also a man who had, curiously, refused to be a slave to
his bank account and, at forty-five, was causing many misgivings to his
friends--and much solid content to himself--through this emancipation.
The lady with presence was not his wife, else the emancipation would
still have been unaccomplished. There were several strong clear-eyed
young men who were still revelling in the untroubled joy of the first
years of an independent income; and they took life too seriously to
enter quickly into the serfdom which follows after. Now they were
preoccupied with buying much pleasant experience in this country and
others. A few of them might, in addition to pleasant living, do
something worth while, one had already done it, all were rather worth
knowing.
Anita's face was a little flushed and she was talking more than usual,
though the air of habitual stillness yet clung to her and her hands lay
quiet on her lap, half covered by the soft deep ruffles of her blue
gown. That she was a student of excellent promise was not known to
those about her and Isabel, from long experience, avoided, when within
earshot of her, the smallest reference to even the least of her friend's
attainments. They did see only a very pretty girl who was talking gayly
of all sorts of things in New York with a delight which was charmingly
out of place, it seemed to them, among these surroundings; for they
could not forget behind the mask of party dress the fact, almost a
menacing one to them, of its being a woman's college. As they were New
Yorkers by inheritance and much more by education Anita was
unconsciously giving them subtle flattery, especially as what she asked
about and evidently cared for was not merely the teas and dances uptown
but the work and play down among the tall buildings. Isabel sat smiling
at Anita's beauty--she gave the word unreservedly that evening--and
wondering at her animation among these people who she had feared would
bore her friend sadly.
An allusion, a name, suggested a plan for the following winter and they
turned to Isabel.
"You are to be with us then?"
"Yes," she answered, "I leave here in a few months." The note of regret
was almost evident.
"And Miss Fiske?"
"Ah! she is fortunate," Isabel answered quickly for her. "She has other
things to fill her days. No, I refrain from untimely allusions but we
all envy her life next year and the year after--for it is all planned,
is it not?"
"Yes," Anita replied after a little pause, "I shall only be a few days
in New York. I am to be very busy."
The flush died off her face and, as she herself was silent, the talk
drifted away from her: when Isabel looked at her next she saw again the
quiet face as she knew and liked it best with a gravity which well
avoided seriousness,--the eyes a little larger and darker than usual
under the bright lights.
_Ellen Rose Giles, '96._
_A DIPLOMATIC CRUSADE_
Sunday after Mid-Years. A grey biting February afternoon, with a promise
of snow in the eager air, was darkening over the deserted campus. The
examinations, which had finally dragged their slow length to an end on
Friday, seemed to have left a peculiar haze in the mental atmosphere;
for throughout the college, whence all who could possibly do so had
departed for a brief rest, there was a subdued and slightly melancholy
air, as though no one had yet realized that another four months must
elapse before the agony of having her knowledge investigated would again
rack mind and body.
Eleanor Mertoun, deep in the comfort of her cushioned window-seat,
alternately mused on the contrast between her busy Thursday self and her
lazy Sunday self, and wished for the return of her roommate, who was
spending the Saturday and Sunday in Philadelphia. It was certainly the
time and place in which to enjoy the retrospect of work done. The red
glow of a quiet little coal fire in the grate mingled pleasantly with
the fading cold light from without, and lit up warmly the dark green
walls of the study, and its polished floor. An antique oval mirror in a
dull old gilt frame dimly gave back the double of a graceful sword fern
which spread its long fronds over the end of a well-filled bookcase
below. Eleanor, being in a contemplative mood, stared hard at the fern
and reflected that _it_ toiled not and was very beautiful. Before she
could go on to the philosophic consequences of her meditation, the door
was swung open vigorously, and in came a tall figure in hat and ulster.
"Why, it's Marjorie Daw herself," exclaimed Eleanor, springing up to
greet the longed-for roommate. "I thought you weren't coming back till
to-morrow? You're just in time to save me from acute melancholia, but I
can't believe you had any premonition of that!"
"I'm _gefrohren_--give me a cup of hot tea, for the love of--Me, and
then I'll tell you," answered Marjorie Conyngham, as she threw off hat
and coat, sat down on the rug by the hearth, and held out both hands
towards the fire.
Eleanor dashed out to fill the kettle, and soon had a steaming cup and a
"jammed" cracker ready for Marjorie. Then she put a "Busy" sign on the
outside of the door to guard against too attentive friends on borrowing
bent, sat down beside the newcomer, clasped her hands around her knees,
and commanded, "Go on."
"I had an unusual and severe attack of piety that prevented me from
cutting Pol. Econ. in the morning. It was brought on, I think, by the
idea of having to copy six pages of lecture notes on the social state of
the indigent Indians."
Eleanor interrupted her. "Oh, I don't in the least care what brought
you, now that you're here. I meant, I want to know all about the
Atkinsons, what you did and said,--and how many times you upset your
glass at table."
Marjorie passed over this insulting thrust, and irrelevantly remarked:
"Isn't it a pleasant thought that exam. time is over, and so Betty Hall
no longer goes down the corridor warbling 'Earth is my resting place,
Heaven is my home,' or 'I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger, I can tarry, I
can tarry but a night'?"
Eleanor laughed at the remembrance. "It is, surely. Poor old Betty!
Doesn't she suffer more from the fear of being flunked out than any
upper-classman you ever saw?--and she makes elaborate preparations for
going home at every exam. time. But come back from this digression and
stick to the manuscript. Marge, conversationally you're a tramp!"
"About the Atkinsons? They're very well, thank you.--Oh, don't break my
head with the tongs and I will be good! I have a lovely tale to tell
you, really, Eleanor. I met a man----"
"Impossible!" interjected Eleanor.
"Who's digressing now?" demanded Marjorie.
A meek small voice from the gathering darkness said "Little Ellie," and
then Marjorie went on; "a man whom you know quite well in the general if
not in the particular--a handsome, well-groomed, middle-aged man with
iron grey hair, serenest confidence in his own judgment and estimate of
things, and--here you may perceive the rub, Lee--unconquerable prejudice
against the essentially modern woman--in the abstract."
"Ah!" breathed Eleanor, scenting the battle from afar.
"In the concrete, I confess, she shows him to be 'not impregnable as a
bulwark of archaism,' as Dr. Phillips would say." Marjorie was smiling
at the fire, which was only half lighting the corner of the dim study.
"Eleanor, from the moment that I first heard that man speak and open
fire on the kind of thing the modern girl is going to become, I marked
him for my prey. Oh! it was lovely," laughed she suddenly, rocking back
and forth in an ecstasy of delighted amusement, "it was lovely to see
the mighty fall."
"Do tell me how it happened! What did you use on the poor man?" asked
the eager Eleanor.
"It wasn't force, hardly even force of argument. He did not know I was a
Bryn Mawrtyr at first, and so he was led into jesting with me just as he
would have with any mere society girl who was ready for badinage. When
he fathomed my real character his face was an entertaining spectacle--a
mixture of regret, astonishment, and--well,--annoyance, such as one is
not always privileged to see. I saw he was preparing for driving me out
of college by hot argument, so I got out my strategic tools and turned
the conversation.
"You know we have threshed this all out before so many times, and raged
to each other about the quarter of the population who take us, without
looking, for mannish boarding-school girls, as empty-headed as the women
of ten centuries ago, but more silly because we pretend to be what we
are not; and about the other quarter, who look upon us as grinds and
blue-stockings, star-gazers impossible and undesirable to touch with a
pole of any length! This man had a smattering of both those ideas, and
was--is--bringing up his daughter on principles impossible to classify.
He told me all about his plans for her before I quite got the
conversation turned from the explosive topic, and I feel sure the poor
child will find herself an anachronism in ten years.
"I knew it would shock him fearfully if I talked politics; but besides
being anxious to shake him up a bit, I really wanted to do battle with
Mr. Atkinson (as usual) about England's policy in South Africa. And so I
launched on that perilous undertaking, making as gallant a defence of
Oom Paul and all Boerdom as I knew how. To my huge delight, the man (his
name is Ballantyne) had to acknowledge that he disagreed with Mr.
Atkinson and agreed with me! Point No. 1.
"Just then Teddy Atkinson began talking music. You know he is very
enthusiastic--goes to the Symphony concerts, all the operas, and that
sort of thing. He asked about the Glee Club at college, and wanted to
know if I were still Leading-Grand-High-Soprano-in-Alt, or something
equally foolish. You should have seen Mr. Ballantyne's face--looked as
if he thought music and political science mutually exclusive terms. I
plunged in at once and talked 'technical' all I knew how. Don't think me
a horrid _poseuse_, Lee, though I was playing to the gallery in a way. I
didn't pretend to very much more than I knew, and besides it was all a
part of my deep-laid plot for bringing down that man."
"You! posing!" was Eleanor's sole comment. "Go on."
"You see my scheme? To let no subject of conversation escape; whether it
was anything Mr. Ballantyne had ever heard of or not makes no
difference. The point was to convince him, as thoroughly as was possible
in one short evening, that I, in the character of college woman, was
neither a bit of thistle-down nor a fearful prig. The next thing was--oh
yes!--domestic affairs. Mrs. Atkinson, without knowing it, helped me
immensely there. She began the topic, and though my knowledge of it was
so theoretical that if I had been an angel I should have feared to tread
on that subject, I rushed in. Fortunately, I had gathered enough
information from running the house last summer while mother was away to
talk without utter nonsense. I told them about the cook who said, when I
went down and criticised some of the products of her skill: 'It's
yersilf I'll set on the stove if yez do be afther interferin' in _my_
bisnis!' And I thought Mr. Ballantyne's amusement rather excessive for
one who disapproved so heartily of me and my college. Perhaps he took it
as a welcome proof that I couldn't manage cooks. It proved a good
transition anyway; for Mr. Atkinson was reminded of one of his delicious
stories, which made me think of some lovely tales we heard from Betty
Hall and the frivolous-minded Dorothy at the fudge party after
Philosophy exam. on Friday; and then of course the Ballantyne had one to
tell, so that the table cheered up markedly. I could see now that he
began to think me amusing if peculiar, and I gained an inch whenever I
could.
"After that we went on talking about all sorts of things, for Teddy
Atkinson couldn't have played better into my hands if he had been an
accomplice, and suggested the most diverse known subjects. College
settlement was closely followed by wireless telegraphy, yacht races, and
golf, especially at the Merion Cricket Club; and though I had to be wary
of terms sometimes when it came to the second and third, I didn't back
down once--not once. Then Mr. Ballantyne and I had a bit of a talk
together, in which I tried to introduce 'a current of new and fresh
ideas' into his mind, and gently remove some others already there. I
think his capitulation would have come very soon if he had stayed
longer, for when he rose to go he said that he did not know whether he
would find it best for his daughter to go to Bryn Mawr, but he hoped she
would prove as many-sided as he had found a college woman might be.
Wasn't that worth working hard for?"
Eleanor, leaning over and spanning Marjorie's forehead with her hands,
murmured "Undue cerebral enlargement----"
"Lee--you idiot!" cried Marjorie, "do you imagine for one moment that I
would have spent a laborious, uncomfortable, self-conscious evening to
make any living person like me on my own account? I didn't care what Mr.
Ballantyne thought of _me_--I wanted to make him like the college girl
in me, and show him how utterly he was mistaken in his baseless notions
of what college makes a woman."
Marjorie was roused now, and in earnest, and the light carelessness was
gone out of her manner. Her wide grey eyes, Eleanor could see by the
fire-glow, were shining with an eager light and her usually pale cheeks
were richly flushed. She rose from the hearth rug, and leaning with one
arm along the mantel, forcefully punctuated her words by tapping her
finger-tips upon it.
"Lee," she said in her clear voice, "we're at a sort of crisis now, I
think--not the same ring that there was, well, about twenty years ago,
when the question was, shall women go to college? That has been
answered, and the answer is, yes, because they _will_. But now there are
quantities of people, just like Mr. Ballantyne who think the fact that
women will do it adds a most unfortunate complexity to modern life; and
the burden of proof that college is the right thing for us lies with us.
I don't mean that we are to claim more for it than it can do, or pretend
to more than we have, but to be so broad-spirited and alert and
interested in everything, that we shall simply convince these people
that college training is the best thing that ever happened to
women--especially Bryn Mawr training. _I'm_ going on a crusade against
all infidels of the genus Ballantyne. Will you go along?"
Eleanor took Marjorie's outstretched hand and laid her other on her
roommate's shoulder. "Of course I will, Marge, as far as I can. But I'm
not capable like you, and can't do half----"
"Yes you are--yes you can," was Marjorie's confused answer. And she went
on dilating upon Eleanor's being "a shark at Major English" and many
other delightful things, until that embarrassed young woman sought a
brief respite in a tour of investigation for the match box, an article
of furniture which seemed bent upon disproving the theory of the
conservation of matter, for it was rarely to be found. This evening, by
some strange chance, it was discovered on the bookcase, and Eleanor
seized it with alacrity. Just then it was useful to her as a diversion
rather than as a light-producing agent, but she struck a match from it,
lighted a candle, and handed it to Marjorie, saying, "There, take that
and go to your room. Your hair looks frumpish with so much excitement,
and if you don't hurry to do it you will be locked out, for the bell
rang ages ago. Think what it would be to miss Sunday evening supper!"
Marjorie vanished behind the portière and continued her flow of
flattery, which Eleanor by singing "Ancient of Days," rendered
inaudible. Then they discovered they had but one minute in which to get
to the dining-room, and fled down the corridor with other late
stragglers to reach the goal of their desires before a dark and cruel
hand should bar them thence.
Marjorie's cause could have found no better champion, no one more fitted
to illustrate her theory of the influence of college training on women,
than herself. She was one of those healthy inspiring people, becoming
ever more numerous especially among college women, who do everything
well, if not all things equally well; and who show how invaluable is the
discipline which has given them largeness of view and a certain ready
grasp of affairs often lacking in those who have missed the same
training. She saw life steadily, this senior of twenty-two, (though she
could not as yet see it whole) and therefore she was neither
scatter-brained nor priggish. The ideals of balance, proportion,
symmetry, self-control, had been growing clear and attractive to her all
her four years, but they had crystallized in her thought only in the
last.
As she had said to Eleanor, they had "threshed it all out before," and
the occasion of their so doing had been this:
Marjorie, aspirant for athletic as well as academic and social success,
practiced basket-ball at every opportunity; and after winning her class
numerals by playing as substitute in a match game in junior year, was in
a fair way to make the senior team. One rainy November afternoon,
Marjorie, in default of an outdoor game, was throwing and catching ball
in the gymnasium with the senior captain and a junior. As she ran across
the floor after a muffed ball (which brought down upon her much reviling
by the captain) she noticed a spellbound freshman standing in the
doorway--a freshman whom she knew slightly. It was a friend's friend
whom Marjorie had been asked, as upper classmen are every year, to "look
up"; and when she had done so had found a rather repressive young
person, of serious-minded intent to study, and do nothing else. When
Marjorie saw her "little freshman friend," as Eleanor called Marian
Coale, with her eyes glued to the white numerals on Marjorie's dark
basket-ball suit, she nodded to her, and later, when they all stopped
playing, walked off with Marian, as she had to stop at Radnor Hall,
where the latter lived.
"I didn't know you played basket-ball," the freshman had said suddenly.
"Too awkward?" asked Marjorie with a quizzical expression in her shining
grey eyes. "Or a weakling--which?"
The freshman was visibly embarrassed. "I didn't mean that, you know,"
she stammered, "but I didn't think you belonged to the set that cares
for--that sort of thing." She was gaining confidence now, and went on
somewhat loftily, "It's rather a waste of time, don't you think? just as
so many teas and plays and things of that sort are. I think we come here
to work." She glanced at the senior stealthily as she delivered this
startling opinion, and was a little annoyed to find her smiling broadly.
"Of course that's what we come here for," cried Marjorie, "but you'll
find that you do your work about forty times better if you do something
else as well." Then she had spent a few moments expounding her views to
the serious-minded freshman, leaving her slightly bewildered and
semi-convinced that there were some things she had not fathomed in her
month of college life.
Marjorie had met before several girls who had gone through and out of
college with similar aims; but she had not found the type a prevailing
one, for, happily, at Bryn Mawr there exists not only strong adherence
to the high intellectual standard, but likewise a healthy tendency
towards general culture and breadth of interests. Marian Coale was one
of that minority whose ideal is only knowledge, not wisdom. She bade
fair to become a bookworm--of high order, it is true, but yet a
bookworm, and a bookworm, as a factor in life, is, by common consent,
less desirable, admirable, and useful than a woman.
Marjorie's attack upon her theories, coming as it did from so well
recognized a student, was from the right quarter, and was well-timed to
give the freshman a new outlook even in her first year. "I hope I didn't
inculcate too much frivolity," said Marjorie as she was telling Eleanor
of this _rencontre_. "I tried to make her see that I did not mean quite
being a Jack-at-all-trades, and missing the kernel of college by running
every organization to the exclusion of lectures. But I toiled to show
her that the opposite sort of mistake is nearly as fatal in the end. I
am hopeful of having her try to make the Glee Club, and perhaps write
for the 'Philistine'! If she turns out a swan in the literary line
shan't I deserve a vote of thanks from the editorial board?"
"You won't get it unless you warn Caroline Brandes beforehand that 'M.
C.' signed to any copy means Marian Coale as author and Marge Conyngham
as inspirer and motive power," answered Eleanor in her dry unsmiling
way. "What started you ramping like a lion against the greasy grinds,
Marjorie Daw?"
"I shouldn't have done it before the end of senior year anyway, Lee, and
probably not then if I had not come across so very inviting a grind as
Marian. You see she is one of the Coales of Hampstead, who are friends
of the Dorsets, and so I have heard of her very often. There is so much
possibility for all sorts of fine things in her that I can't bear to see
her shutting everything but one out of her life, even though that one be
books. Be a good friend to her, Lee, by showing her that even the
president of Self-Government and the next European Fellow----"
Eleanor's strong hand shut off Marjorie's speech, for not even by her
roommate would she suffer her chances for carrying off this, the highest
of undergraduate honours, to be discussed. She now informed Marjorie
that if she wished to go on telling about her schemes for Relieving
Socially Indigent Freshmen, she (Lee) would listen with joy; but
approaches to any other topic would be instantly punished. And so
Marjorie returned to her tale.